Theater of the Soul

I went to lunch with a friend of mine yesterday. D is a public housing inspector for a HUD agency in my area and she also manages a small portfolio of investment properties. She deals with a lot of dysfunction inherent in the low-income services arena and has many war stories to share.

I already had a table for us by the time she arrived, looking harried and out of sorts. It seems that she had recieved a phone call yesterday morning from the state police crime unit, asking her to come identify the body of one of her clients. This man had, very unfortunately, met his untimely demise at the business end of a shotgun; self-inflicted by the looks of it.

Poor D. She was obviously still a little bit in shock and sick to her stomach, so she didn’t eat anything…the images still being burned into her brain and all. I half-heartedly nibbled on my lasagna and salad, but my stomach just wasn’t up to the task. By the time we parted ways, she was steadier and had regained a bit of her humor.

I’ve cleaned up my fair share of nasty messes, left behind by tenants. Maggoty garbage and floors caked in pet feces top the list. But I’ve never been called upon to identify the body of a tenant, much less one that has splattered their brains all over the room. Did you know that there are ‘crime scene cleaners’ out there that will come in and clean up things like that? These are the kinds of things that I just do NOT want to know about.

There’s not enough money in the world that would have gotten me into that apartment to identify that guy…OR clean up after him.